Fire by Friction

by Norm Kidder

Anthropologists debate
the proper place in the fossil record to make the jump from apeman
(Australopithecus) to man (Homo). The current trend is to base
this arbitrary quantum leap on the first appearance of manufactured
stone tools. The earliest case for this so far has been named
Homo habilis (Handy man), a being otherwise physically identical
to nearby apemen. This approach continues the bias toward stone
tools inherent in the term stone-age to describe the human condition
until the advent of metallurgy. This bias is the natural result
of stone tools being all that's left of ancient technologies,
and thus serving the needs of archaeologists. Recently chimpanzee
groups in the wild have been found using stone tools. Shouldn't
they also then be considered human? I suggest a different theoretical
approach - the use of fire as a tool.

The ancient tool kit probably consisted of a crude digging
stick, a sharp or pointed stone, a stone hammer, and pieces of
bark or leaf used as a cup for water. These are little different
from the tools known to be used by chimps. This kit did not change
for vast stretches of time. I propose that the stimulus for change
that jump started the behavioral evolution for our kind was the
discovery of fire as a tool.

Pre-human hominids were omnivorous gatherers and scavengers,
killing relatively helpless animals if discovered. They lived
at a time of drought, when the great forests of the world were
shrinking and being replaced by grasslands. They were forced to
make dangerous excursions away from the relative safety of the
trees out into the more food-rich plains. Foraging required that
group size remain small, and lookouts be always alert for the
many large predators. Another element of life a few million years
ago was occasional fires, started by lightning or volcanoes, which
would sweep across large areas unchecked. A burned area would
provide a major windfall to hominid groups. The ground would be
cleared of dead vegetation exposing seeds and tubers, as well
as providing the occasional cooked dead animal (one advantage
to cooked meat is its shelf life). Burning also tended to run
off most predators, and make it much easier to detect any that
returned. For millennia perhaps, our ancestors learned to seek
out burning grasslands which might provide food, briefly, for
large congregations of hominids (the first conventions).

The great leap forward that I feel justifies a new classification
for humans came when the first of these ancestors took a burning
branch and set a new fire, taking control of the process. This
discovery that fire could be used to make food more readily available,
to preserve some of it for the future, and help defend against
predators, created the technological base for modern society.

Fire Stick Farmers

A study of aboriginal groups around the world gives clues to
the advances in the use of fire as technology. One of the oldest
uninterrupted cultural traditions known to science was found in
the Australian Aborigines before they were 'introduced to modern
civilization. One anthropologist described their food gathering
practices as fire stick farming. Using fire to determine the species
of plants available to them for food. Specifically, they used
fire to reduce less desirable plants, and encourage the most useful
ones. The result was that most of the continents plant communities
were, until recently, maintained by fire.

The evidence for California Indians indicates a similar use
of burning to promote seed production in grasses and wildflowers;
thatch removal to favor tuberous growth and other wildflowers;
and thinning of brush to improve hunting by both increasing animal
browse and decreasing cover.

Fire was also a critical element in the hunting process. Many
ancient groups used fire to drive animals into traps (blind canyons,
pits, tar pits, marshes, cliffs, etc.). In recent times, fire
was being used by California Indians to drive ground squirrels
from their burrows, bees and hornets from their hives and grasshoppers
into a pit oven. Smoke and fire permeate most aspects of daily
life. It is used to straighten arrows and spears, harden digging
sticks, bend basket rims, waterproof tanned hides, purify and
deodorize and of course to cook.

The importance of fire to all ancient people made it nearly
inevitable that eventually someone would discover how to make
fire. It is unlikely that anything in the fossil record will enable
us to know just when this change took place. Hearthfires started
from wildfire are identical to those started by fire sticks. Even
if by chance a set of fire sticks were to be found, it would only
tell us when conditions for preservation existed, not the earliest
use. As to how the secret of fire making was discovered, I have
my guess:

The same process that produces fire will also eventually
produce a hole. I believe that someone trying to drill a hole
in a board discovered fire making accidentally.

The wide range of the fire-drill throughout many continents
(Australian aborigines use the same method as American Indians,
etc.) implies that it may have been known before the great dispersal
of humans carried out by Homo erectus around 1.5 million years
ago, or at least by the migrations at the end of the ice ages
starting around 40 thousand years ago (although it is possible
that it arose separately and identically in many different places).

The basic technique for making fire by friction involves spinning
a drill against the bottom of a hole in a hearth board. Friction
from rubbing the sticks together produces heat and (if the correct
woods are used) fine powdery sawdust, or char. The char is collected
in a notch cut into the center of the hole. This concentrates
the heat, the wood acting as an insulator. If the char is heated
to 800 degrees Fahrenheit it will begin to smolder (data courtesy
of Richard Baugh). Placing the smoldering char (ember) into a
bed of tinder (fine, dry plant fibers) and blowing gently will
cause the tinder to burst into flames. This is much easier to
describe than to accomplish. Reaching 800 degrees Fahrenheit requires
considerable pressure be applied to the drill.

The hand spun fire drill, the oldest method, accomplishes this
through hand pressure against the drill while bearing down with
the weight of the body while continuing to spin the drill as fast
as possible. With practice, a strong, fairly heavy, well conditioned
person can get an ember in a few seconds of hard work, under ideal
conditions. Smaller or less experienced people can make fire through
cooperative efforts and persistence. Mechanical advantages can
be achieved through the use of a cap piece which is used to push
down on the drill. To keep the drill spinning with one hand, a
bowstring is wrapped around the drill and moved back and forth,
spinning the drill. Another variant involves using toggles (and
normally a second person) to spin the drill. These methods probably
evolved where conditions made fire making difficult.

Three other techniques for friction fire use lateral friction
rather than rotational - fire plow (movement up and down a groove),
fire saw (the edge of one piece cuts through the middle of another),
and the fire cord (a vine is pulled through a notch). Two techniques
are known using heating by compression - the fire piston (works
like a diesel engine), and flint and steel (iron particles are
crushed, and torn away, causing enough heat to ignite them). The
last of these is the best known, but was probably not common until
iron became available. Modern matches use materials which ignite
easily with little friction heat. Lighters use miniature flint
and steel sets to light their gas fumes. Three new ways to make
fire have been developed in recent years - electric spark, electric
resistance, and chemical resistance.

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